Marie Josèphe of Saxony, Dauphine of France (1731–1767)

Marie Josèphe of Saxony became Dauphine of France in 1747 when she married the son of Louis XV, and La Tour's pastel of 1749 depicts her at twenty-one, just two years after her arrival at Versailles. She was a notably cultured and pious woman who survived the formal constraints of court life by maintaining genuine intellectual interests, and her early death in 1767 cut short what might have been a transformative influence as queen. La Tour's position as portraitist to the French royal family and court was at its strongest in the 1740s and early 1750s, and this Dauphine portrait belongs to the core of his Versailles oeuvre. The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden holds the work — a resonant provenance given Marie Josèphe's Saxon origins, which meant her image had significance on both French and German sides of the dynastic relationship.

Pastel on paper, with La Tour's richly modelled surface giving particular depth to the flesh tones. Court dress is handled with attention to the hierarchy of fabrics — silk, lace, embroidery — that signalled Dauphiné status within the rigid protocol of Versailles fashion.